SXSW PANEL: How to Prepare for The Tidal Wave of Big Data Jobs

This post is a follow up to our previous two posts on our SXSW Interactive panel series. Umbel is hosting a full day of panels on big data from 11AM – 4:30PM on Friday, March 13 with a line-up of global experts who’ll be discussing data insights, best practices, success stories and the very latest in big data technologies. Panels are open to all SXSW Interactive badge holders.

PANEL 3: How to Prepare For the Tidal Wave of Big Data JobsFriday, March 13, 2:00PM-3:00PM at ACL Live at The Moody Theater

Chief Digital Officers and experts on the Big Data jobs landscape will discuss the digital transformation in multiple new industries, the new roles emerging in these industries, and the skills required to snag them.

Panel Overview

According to the CDO Club, in 2014 there were an estimated 1,000 Chief Digital Officers and thousands of Data Scientists at companies worldwide – doubling the numbers since 2013. These new titles are only the beginning in a massive shift to accommodate the influx of big data. CDOs are found most frequently in the U.S., followed by the U.K., Australia and Spain (tied for third), France and Italy (tied for fourth), and then Germany. Much like the changing roles throughout the digital industry, with the introduction of social media platforms (i.e. the role of Social Media Manager isn’t even a decade old), the big data industry is creating new roles for both legacy brands and startups.

Data experts will be a scarce, valuable commodity in the next decade and a huge opportunity for people with the right skill sets. In this session, you’ll hear from top industry executives, many of them Chief Digital Officers themselves, about how to navigate the new job landscape in the age of big data.

Panelists

Sree Sreenivasan, CDO, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sree is the first Chief Digital Officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where he heads up digital, web, social, mobile, video, apps, data, geolocation, email and more. Previously he spent 20 years at Columbia University first as faculty of the Columbia Journalism School, and then a year as the university’s first Chief Digital Officer. He trains professionals around the world about smarter use of social and digital media and was part of the founding team at DNAinfo.com. Sree is the co-founder of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA.org), and is on AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter list; Poynter’s 35 most influential people in social media, Newsweek’s 40 most influential South Asians in the US, & Quill Magazine’s list of 20 journalists to follow on Twitter.

David Mathison is the Curator of the CDO Summit and founder of the CDO Club. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on Chief Digital Officers and Chief Data officers, and has been quoted by the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, McKinsey & Company, MIT Sloan Management Review, and VentureBeat, among others. Previously, Mathison was founder and CEO of the Kinecta Corporation (now part of Oracle) and Vice President with Reuters, where he headed up online content syndication. Mathison has 30+ years experience in the hi-tech, information, publishing, software, and events industries and in recruiting key executives.

Amen Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer – City of New York

Amen Ra Mashariki the New York City’s chief analytics officer. As senior executive in the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, he will be the point person on projects that utilize the city’s open data strategies, using public information to create initiatives that serve the public good. The Office of Data Analytics was a result of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s intense focus on cross-agency data gathering. Amen is a Brooklyn native with a master’s in computer science and a doctorate in engineering. He comes to the de Blasio administration from the federal government, where he served as chief technology officer at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. He was also a White House Fellow.

Tracey Wallace, Managing Editor, Bigcommerce

Tracey is a content strategist focused on growing businesses and startups via strategic content and thought leadership campaigns. She is currently a content strategist and managing editor at Bigcommerce. Before that, Tracey was the content marketing manager at Umbel and created content focused on big data, data rights and the convergence of e-commerce, sports, retail and fashion with big data technology and platforms. She’s also written for Mashable, Refinery29, ELLEmagazine and TimeOut New York.